I am telling the truth when I say that I
felt drawn towards suicide. I take this opportunity of declaring
strongly that on all occasions two missionaries should go together.
I was not of this opinion a few weeks ago, but I had no idea how
weak an individual I am. My eyes have filled with tears frequently
these last few days in spite of myself, and I do not wonder in the
least that Grant's brother shot himself. _Oh! the intense
loneliness of Christ's life_, not a single one understood Him! He
bore it. O Jesus, let me follow in Thy steps, and have in me the
same Spirit that Thou hadst!

'Read papers in the evening (Oct 5). So Jones of Singrauli is dead!
I heard him in Exeter Hall, May, a year or two ago, and heard a
good deal of him through Dr. Evans, of Chestnut College. I am
persuaded he was a missionary among a thousand. When he returned to
his station he found that during his absence matters had got out of
order a good deal, and he set about putting them right. Now he is
dead! How prodigal God seems of His workers--Hartley, Jones, both A
1, both gone. God's ways are not ours. We would have preserved
these two at all risk and expense, but God _takes_ them away, and
it seems to us as if He were hurting His own cause. God knows best,
but to _us_ it is a great mystery.'

Two days later he received a letter telling him of the death of a
brilliant young Glasgow student, and he enters in his diary comments
which received only too complete an illustration in his own subsequent
career:--

'Another splendid student going from college to the grave. This is
a thing of common occurrence with reference to Glasgow College,
and, if I am not mistaken, I have seen it somewhere publicly
commented on. Men, poor it may be, strive through college with a
mind and determination beyond their circumstances and bodily
strength, fight a great battle with poverty and more clever
students, resolute to take the first place if possible, and just as
the college is finished with them, and sending them forth to the
field of life decorated with all the honours it can bestow, the
fond Alma Mater has to keep on mourning and drop her tear over an
early grave.

'Are the young men to blame? Who can be restrained by the
cold-blooded calculation of preserving health? "There is my
opponent